However, if you still havenít pre-ordered Forza Horizon yet, Iíve got a heck of a deal for you. The Microsoft Store is taking pre-orders for Forza Horizon and, if you pre-order the game, youíll also get a $10 coupon plus 1,600 MS Points Ė just enough for when the Rally Expansion Pack comes around. Handy, right? Check out the link for details.

However, if you still havenít pre-ordered Forza Horizon yet, Iíve got a heck of a deal for you. The Microsoft Store is taking pre-orders for Forza Horizon and, if you pre-order the game, youíll also get a $10 coupon plus 1,600 MS Points Ė just enough for when the Rally Expansion Pack comes around. Handy, right? Check out the link for details.

In with this deal, no release day delivery but I won't be able to get any time in until the weekend anyways.

However, if you still havenít pre-ordered Forza Horizon yet, Iíve got a heck of a deal for you. The Microsoft Store is taking pre-orders for Forza Horizon and, if you pre-order the game, youíll also get a $10 coupon plus 1,600 MS Points Ė just enough for when the Rally Expansion Pack comes around. Handy, right? Check out the link for details.

In with this deal, no release day delivery but I won't be able to get any time in until the weekend anyways.

Just checked my tracking and it is scheduled for tuesday delivery. Nice to get it same as I would from amazon but with ms pts. This is with the free standard shipping option.

I just posted this over at the FM.net forum to a thread about FM4 loyalty cars:

Quote

This is weird. I got my FM4 loyalty cars, eight of them, all well and good. Later on I went to Dak's garage after I had leveled up a wristband and when I went to change cars I was asked if I wanted to download my loyalty cars. Huh? I clicked OK and it downloaded the same eight cars, so I have duplicates of eight cars. I am tempted to sell off the duplicates and make some money, but if this is bug and selling them off is considered an exploit, I could get the banhammer laid up my head. So I'll wait.

Hated the start of the game, chase car view, auto trans, driving line on full, stupid music blaring....just wasn't feeling it but when I finally could change the options the game started to be fun. I like the open world style and spent some time just driving around, not sold on the idea of the party hub thing yet. The in cockpit views don't seem near as nice as Forza but they get the job done, only have driven two cars so far so maybe some cars are better.

Hated the start of the game, chase car view, auto trans, driving line on full, stupid music blaring....just wasn't feeling it but when I finally could change the options the game started to be fun. I like the open world style and spent some time just driving around, not sold on the idea of the party hub thing yet. The in cockpit views don't seem near as nice as Forza but they get the job done, only have driven two cars so far so maybe some cars are better.

I still haven't figured out why every Forza game makes you play a race without being able to change any of the settings. It's really stupid.

One thing I definitely HATE is the Skills Stunt in the PR Stunts at the Horizon Outposts. Trying to hoon around in a couple of minutes to make 15,000 or <gulp> 28,000 points is way beyond my abilities

Yeah, I touched on that in my review. It's like the skills competition is stuck on hard with no adjustment.

I could have made the points with the RUF one by the waterfall if I had another 15 seconds, or if they'd stop penalizing you for recovery time. Just getting started takes time .... let me tell you, pulling off a 16k move was an awesome achievement - too bad it _still_ didn't get me the points I needed.

Logged

"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners." - Johnny Carson

I'm not feeling the love for this game. Oh, there are some things I do like about it, but here is a partial list of annoyances:

- The Paint Shop has flouresant lighting which reflects off the car you are trying to paint or apply decals to. This is really annoying as you have to keep moving the damn camera to avoid the reflections. FM4 didn't do anything dumb like this.

- Speaking of the Paint Shop, the layer menus are tilted, which looks all cool and edgy no doubt, but it obscures part of the damn car!

- The commercials on the radio stations, or I guess I mean the DJ commentary, is astoundingly lame. Ditto the comments by your "rivals" before each race.

- Just like in Project Gotham Racing, there's little motivation to get a number of cars of the same class unless there is some restriction for a race, like AWD or Japanese or pre-1970 or the like. Usually I find one with the best numbers and I use that to race, since there's no real reason to spend the time prepping more cars than necessary. This is because...

- ...You can't tune your cars. Now I have to say I am impressed that just like in FM4 you can select individual parts; however, since you can't tune it's rather hit or miss. Getting a racing gearbox is great, unless the gear ratios you are given aren't the ones you want.

- The map is just not big enough, and there is not enough road mileage. I've played eight and a quarter hours and I've covered 588 miles and with that I've unlocked all the major roads and almost all of the rest except for a few tiny connectors. And that mileage includes the miles I've run in races.

- Speaking of races, I've run about a third of them, according to the stats. There's just not a lot of variety. Oh sure, some are run in towns and some out in the countryside, some are at night and some during the day, some are circuits and some point to point. However, they just don't feel all that different as far as the racing goes. And part of that is due to...

- ...The lack of Forza physics. Yes, I know they claim that the game engine is from FM4, but I have put dozens and dozens of hours in FM4 and even went back today and tried it again, trying to use the same car in both games, and it's not the same. I race with the assists off and in FM4 you feel like you are balancing on a knife edge to make the perfect apex, shifting exactly at the right moment to use the torque of the engine, pushing the tires to the very limit of adhesion. In FH I feel like it doesn't matter because it's going to slip and slide and hey, I'm just going to carom off the guardrails anyway.

- And there is no damage, so there is no consequence to bad driving except to lose a little time. I can just hammer through a turn sideswiping opponents and clipping the terrain, because it's not like I'm in a real car.

- And I can't race against the AI of my choice at a track of my choice like I can in FM4. It's a great way to test out your car tuning... oh, wait, I can't tune my car!

I have other gripes, but that's enough for now. As I said, I don't hate the game, I'm just disappointed over so many aspects of it that could have been so much better. I'm pretty sure I'll be passing on the Season Pass and all the DLC, unless I read enough about the Rally Expansion coming in December to think it might be worth getting.

so did anybody else get all these cars?,i was quite surprised at them all

anyway,as soon as i got my Yellow Wristband i got into the S5S Raptor(it was an R2),and went screwing it around the map,and that is all i have been doing,it's much easier to rack up points driving that car because its quite mental,driving across a golf course is quite funny though

What is a 'Barn Find' by the way?,i have seen many Barns out there,but nothing happens,is it specific barns i need to find?

What is a 'Barn Find' by the way?,i have seen many Barns out there,but nothing happens,is it specific barns i need to find?

You will get notified when a barn find is unlocked, you have to reach certain levels to have each one appear. When they do they show up on your map as white circles; you drive around in that area there till you find a barn and then drive up to it. You have to get pretty close and on a certain side, so just circle it a bit.

I'm not feeling the love for this game. Oh, there are some things I do like about it, but here is a partial list of annoyances:

- The Paint Shop has flouresant lighting which reflects off the car you are trying to paint or apply decals to. This is really annoying as you have to keep moving the damn camera to avoid the reflections. FM4 didn't do anything dumb like this.

- Speaking of the Paint Shop, the layer menus are tilted, which looks all cool and edgy no doubt, but it obscures part of the damn car!

- The commercials on the radio stations, or I guess I mean the DJ commentary, is astoundingly lame. Ditto the comments by your "rivals" before each race.

- Just like in Project Gotham Racing, there's little motivation to get a number of cars of the same class unless there is some restriction for a race, like AWD or Japanese or pre-1970 or the like. Usually I find one with the best numbers and I use that to race, since there's no real reason to spend the time prepping more cars than necessary. This is because...

- ...You can't tune your cars. Now I have to say I am impressed that just like in FM4 you can select individual parts; however, since you can't tune it's rather hit or miss. Getting a racing gearbox is great, unless the gear ratios you are given aren't the ones you want.

- The map is just not big enough, and there is not enough road mileage. I've played eight and a quarter hours and I've covered 588 miles and with that I've unlocked all the major roads and almost all of the rest except for a few tiny connectors. And that mileage includes the miles I've run in races.

- Speaking of races, I've run about a third of them, according to the stats. There's just not a lot of variety. Oh sure, some are run in towns and some out in the countryside, some are at night and some during the day, some are circuits and some point to point. However, they just don't feel all that different as far as the racing goes. And part of that is due to...

- ...The lack of Forza physics. Yes, I know they claim that the game engine is from FM4, but I have put dozens and dozens of hours in FM4 and even went back today and tried it again, trying to use the same car in both games, and it's not the same. I race with the assists off and in FM4 you feel like you are balancing on a knife edge to make the perfect apex, shifting exactly at the right moment to use the torque of the engine, pushing the tires to the very limit of adhesion. In FH I feel like it doesn't matter because it's going to slip and slide and hey, I'm just going to carom off the guardrails anyway.

- And there is no damage, so there is no consequence to bad driving except to lose a little time. I can just hammer through a turn sideswiping opponents and clipping the terrain, because it's not like I'm in a real car.

- And I can't race against the AI of my choice at a track of my choice like I can in FM4. It's a great way to test out your car tuning... oh, wait, I can't tune my car!

I have other gripes, but that's enough for now. As I said, I don't hate the game, I'm just disappointed over so many aspects of it that could have been so much better. I'm pretty sure I'll be passing on the Season Pass and all the DLC, unless I read enough about the Rally Expansion coming in December to think it might be worth getting.

I'm not sure why you were expecting Forza 5 here. If it was Forza 5, they would have called it that. This was always going to be a lighter experience that Forza 5 and appeal to less hardcore of a crowd. Knowing how much you love more hardcore racing games, I think you should probably just stick to Forza 4 until Forza 5 comes out.

For me, I enjoy both. I can use Horizon for open world more-arcadey (but not as bad as other arcade racers) fun and F4 for more of a sim.

I'm not sure why you were expecting Forza 5 here. If it was Forza 5, they would have called it that. This was always going to be a lighter experience that Forza 5 and appeal to less hardcore of a crowd. Knowing how much you love more hardcore racing games, I think you should probably just stick to Forza 4 until Forza 5 comes out.

For me, I enjoy both. I can use Horizon for open world more-arcadey (but not as bad as other arcade racers) fun and F4 for more of a sim.

Especially after the demo I knew I wasn't expecting FM5 , but since FM5 is a year away and it seems that there won't be any more new content for FM4 I was giving FH a try.

There were a number of items in my list, like the poor paint shop presentation and the annoying voice acting, that could have been better even in this more arcade-like Forza game. This is an average arcade racer; I was just hoping for more from the Forza franchise.

Playground Games != Turn10 ... I didn't have the same expectations that you did, it seems.

I'm still having fun with it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun with it as well. It's just that if you are going to label the game as "Forza" something, whether it's by Turn 10 or Playground, to me it comes with a certain set of expectations of realism and thoroughness. And no hokey voice acting

Yeah, the voice acting is not super great. The whole UI, color scheme, festival theme, "culture", crap music and everything really reminds me of Dirt 2. That was my least favorite part of Dirt 2, so I'm not exactly happy to see it make a return here. I don't buy driving games to get force fed some Euro-twerp's idea of "culture".

Other than that, though, I'm really enjoying the game more than I expected. I always try to like new Forza games, but the whole experience has a sterile feeling that ends up boring me after a little while. I can't explain it better than that, but this one seems to have overcome that sterile feeling.

Being able to just cruise around in the open world is a big help, since it's so much fun to just drive and not worry about being perfect on a race line all the time. Plus, I prefer more point-to-point races rather than just circuit tracks.

Haha, I spend way too much time just driving around trying to discover roads and smash discount signs as well.

Well, once I saw they were knocking off 1% with each sign and there were 100 of them, it kind of became a quest.

BTW, that guy has spent his budget on one of the worst advertising teams I have ever seen. Who the hell is putting signs behind barns and on a lot of out of the way roads? And then offer a massive discount to anyone who removes said advertising? I'll be happy to fleece him.